u-he

paterpeter · Post by **paterpeter** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:01 pm

Will the $25 coupon from the survey be applicable to Hive? That is, will Hive be purchasable before the coupon expires?

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:06 pm

If people can pay $99, they will probably pay $199

Within reason, price is pretty much a non issue for plugins for most people as they're relatively cheap to all other music related purchases.

zvenx · Post by **zvenx** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:07 pm

In the end upon release, only you can decide if it is worth $149 to you.

But for me, that we live in a world where a $149 pricetag for a potentially great specialised synth is considered too expensive is unbelievable.... If I carry three friends to a nice dinner I will spend more than that, and doubtful that the dinner will earn me any money of income.

rsp

firepile · Post by **firepile** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:14 pm

GHOST19 wrote:a new product at a price that is not justified by its features and qualities

How can you say that before it has even been released?

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:20 pm

zvenx wrote:In the end upon release, only you can decide if it is worth $149 to you.

Totally true, and as firepile wrote, it's not really fair to judge the price before the features have been announced, and sound demos have been posted. Nonetheless, all which GHOST19 wrote seems valid too. Especially when there's not that much of a price gap between Zebra, which probably offers loads more features than this one. But that's just an opinion, and in the end, charging what can be charged, and therefor seeling well, will be the ultimate truth, so i won't complain.

@ zvenx: Don't know where you go for dinner, but usually, the charge for 4 persons is about 85-90 € here, unless you continuosly order.

GHOST19 · Post by **GHOST19** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:28 pm

firepile wrote:
GHOST19 wrote:a new product at a price that is not justified by its features and qualities
How can you say that before it has even been released?

According to Urs own words it offers nothing special except straightforward workflow, low CPU and a particular effort to nail the supersaw, with obviously the U-He usual uncompromised sonic quality.
Btw most of the features have been annonced.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:37 pm

GHOST19 wrote:Btw most of the features have been annonced.

We're also experimenting with some features that have not been announced yet. Because the outcome of these experiments isn't decided yet, we don't say anything about them.

zvenx · Post by **zvenx** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:52 pm

chk071 wrote:
zvenx wrote:In the end upon release, only you can decide if it is worth $149 to you.
Totally true, and as firepile wrote, it's not really fair to judge the price before the features have been announced, and sound demos have been posted. Nonetheless, all which GHOST19 wrote seems valid too. Especially when there's not that much of a price gap between Zebra, which probably offers loads more features than this one. But that's just an opinion, and in the end, charging what can be charged, and therefor seeling well, will be the ultimate truth, so i won't complain.

@ zvenx: Don't know where you go for dinner, but usually, the charge for 4 persons is about 85-90 € here, unless you continuosly order.

Maybe Zebra then is way underpriced

I guess I have gotten old and come from a totally different place. I come from a time when I would save and pay $1200-$2500 for a rack synth. Where if you want the best tools, be prepared to save and spend in the thousands for them.
I come from where I earn my living from music and based on u-he's synth history, Hive will most likely be at the top of the heap, and therefore to invest $149 in a tool that will help me make much more money than that is a no-brainer (assuming of course it lives up to the u-he name).

And now live in a world, where far too often I observe some people expecting music and movies to be free. Where freeware and the abundance of hobby musicians have spoiled some to expect the best tools free or cheap, and it bothers me....For me it breeds an attitude of entitlement.

I see musical tools as an investment into my profession. For making more money, being better equipped to hopefully work quicker and output a better quality.

@chk071, lol, not in jamaica at a nice restaurant.

rsp - now the grumpy old man in the room

stardustmedia · Post by **stardustmedia** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 2:03 pm

GHOST19 wrote:Well the price of "..." was fixed in 2007 and at that point it was a great bang for the buck because it was one of the first credible software alternatives for a Virus. Now there are many more options and the high price point is mainly justified by its industry standard status, although even the developer seemed to aknowledge the problem by running the first promotion on the synth for years.
In this context the Hive looks slighly overpriced from its release at $149 and that won't look better in a few years with almost no option to ever get it significantly cheaper.
That's a pity because U-He with Zebra, Diva, ACE and Bazille arguably offer better bang for the buck than their competitors, for example new OSC and filter models are added for free in Diva instead of releasing a brand new €100+ synth, and on top of that U-He also thinks about those who can't afford or justify even the €69 ACE by having the best freeware and magware offering among synth developers.
But for the first time U-He is likely to release a new product at a price that is not justified by its features and qualities but just because they can and think that will earn them more money at the end. That is disappointing.
I agree selling very cheap plugins is not necessarily the best business decision in VST land and it's a bit disgusting to see so many developers pricing their plugins quite high to look professionnal and then having 50% discount sales to offer prices people are willing to pay for them, but I really think $109 or $119would be much more consistent with U-He pricing with the no sales policy and allow to stay competitive over time while being expensive enough to look serious.

Maybe there will be much more bang for the buck, than you can anticipate at the moment, or do you already know the actual product?

imagine2014 · Post by **imagine2014** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 2:21 pm

The only specialized synth that emulates supersaw rather well (I am not mentioning complex popular synths like Synthmaster / Sylenth / Omni which are capable of much more) I can think of is JP6K. Unfortunately it's not on Mac platform, therefore I just tried it some time ago on my PC notebook, the sound was quite fine for the price.

However, my point is that it costs around $30 and it must be damn good "supersaw" synth from u-he to spend $149 for it. I am a huge fan of u-he products but this seems overpriced for such a specialized synth.

But... u-he surprise me again, please!

PS : The point with the dinner is great indeed but you know... we cannot be locked non-stop in our studios and there are many other things to spend the money on.

2ZrgE · Post by **2ZrgE** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 2:31 pm

GHOST19 wrote:Well the price of "..." was fixed in 2007 and at that point it was a great bang for the buck because it was one of the first credible software alternatives for a Virus. Now there are many more options ...

Which alternatives do you have in mind?

Point me to another synth which sounds that incredible with that low CPU usage and overall accessibility when programming. Not to mention the vast amount of presets and tutorials...

I hope that the Hive will be much more than "yet just another Supersaw"...

2ZrgE · Post by **2ZrgE** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 2:35 pm

Urs wrote:Also, we've done the experiment of "lower price and sell more". It's not true. ACE should appeal the most (roundest feature set, best bang per buck, good compromise on quality vs. cpu), but it is our worst selling synth - even though we put the most money into it.

I must admit that the combination of supposed complexibility and high CPU usage almost stopped me from buying...then again the new 1.3 presets by HS did the job for me finally.

zvenx · Post by **zvenx** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:00 pm

imagine2014 wrote:The only specialized synth that emulates supersaw rather well (I am not mentioning complex popular synths like Synthmaster / Sylenth / Omni which are capable of much more) I can think of is JP6K. Unfortunately it's not on Mac platform, therefore I just tried it some time ago on my PC notebook, the sound was quite fine for the price.

However, my point is that it costs around $30 and it must be damn good "supersaw" synth from u-he to spend $149 for it. I am a huge fan of u-he products but this seems overpriced for such a specialized synth.

But... u-he surprise me again, please!
.......

I guess lets see what it does first eh?
rsp

stardustmedia · Post by **stardustmedia** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:39 pm

Urs wrote:
GHOST19 wrote:Btw most of the features have been annonced.
We're also experimenting with some features that have not been announced yet. Because the outcome of these experiments isn't decided yet, we don't say anything about them.

That was my first thought too.

Then, even with announced features, it's still hard or impossible to say if the price is reasonable or not.

knowix · Post by **knowix** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 7:23 pm

Price is definitely a bit of a surprise. But then again, if it's successful, it'll probably require a lot of customer support. Not to mention it'll probably be the U-He synth most attractive to Warez users.

BUT I urge Urs to not close the lid on the synth engine, until after a month or so of open beta testing.

If he's going to take such a combative tack with this synth then perhaps he needs a combative beta period too. Encourage users to post patches from other synths that people think are superior sounding to Hive. Actual patches, not just sounds, so that they can be properly analysed and compared to what Hive can do. If you're going to be combative and expensive, then the synth better be able to make a decent proportion of users say it's better sounding than Sylenth/Virus TI/Spire etc.

It would be all too easy to have a synth that has superior CPU requirements and less aliasing, and have people say it's thin sounding, or too dark, or not punchy enough, or hard to fit in a mix...

u-he

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